Plant Functional Types: Their Relevance to Ecosystem Properties and Global Change (International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme Book Series, Series Number 1)

When predicting the effects of changing climate and carbon dioxide on plants at the global scale there is a major stumbling block--we have very little information, in many cases none, about how plants will respond in the future. In order to circumvent this problem, and until more information on species accumulates, we reduce the diversity of species to a diversity of functions and structures. The structures may be trees, shrubs, herbs and grasses. The functions may be types of photosynthetic processes, the capacity to minimize water loss and varying the timing of growth. This book describes approaches and methods for defining these functional types in ways that maximize our potential to predict accurately the responses of real vegetation with real species diversity. This book will be useful to those interested in botany, ecology, and environmental science.

We have little or no information to predict how plants will respond to the effects of changing climate and carbon dioxide at the global scale. This book describes approaches and methods to maximize our potential to predict the responses of real vegetation with real species diversity.